Neda Kovinić pursued her PhD in performance and documentary installations, at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade. She has the Master of Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, and the Master of Interior design at the Faculty of the Applied Arts in Belgrade, Serbia.
Artist Statement
My artistic practice began in the mid-1990s, during the wars in former Yugoslavia, and was shaped by my affinity with the conceptual art practices developed at the Student Cultural Center (SKC) in Belgrade during the 1970s. In a time of political oppression, war crimes, poverty and international sanctions, friendships and the community I built with fellow friends became a source of light and hope. Together, we protested in the streets, made art at the SKC Gallery, and created our own spaces of freedom, solidarity and imagination amid the darkness of everyday life. This experience of communal escapism laid the foundations for the questions that continue to shape my artistic practice: How can art foster bonds between people? How can it create spaces for personal transformation, collective enthusiasm and ways of being together? Today, I find myself in Germany at a time of democratic decline and the rise of the far right, which brings back memories of my region in the 1990s. I turned to dance out of a need to work with others and to search for forms of expression beyond a language increasingly shaped by capitalism. I create temporary communities where people share movement, conversation, time and space. Alongside contemporary dance, I dare to return to Balkan collective dances and mass choreographies from former Yugoslavia– forms I once found embarrassing. I now ask what their circles, rhythm, repetition and playfulness might teach us about being together. Through performance, video, drawing, sound and objects, I explore the body as a site of memory, agency and resistance. My installations and performances become spaces for embodied encounters, where individual experiences can unfold into collective gestures, and where care, humour and playfulness offer possibilities for relating differently. Let's try care, humour and moving together as ways of relating differently.
CV
Neda Kovinic is a visual and performance artist
Born in Belgrade former Yugoslavia, based in Berlin in Germany
nedakovinic@gmail.com
EXHIBITIONS
Solo
2025 Moody Drifts: Affective Resistance, dance performance, Theatre Rampe
2024 "Glitch: Bodies Unseen" video installation, Showcase GlogauAIR Berlin, Germany
2023 "Soft power" performance, video and space installation, Kunstraum 34, Festival “Trips”, Stuttgart, Germany
2022 "Silly girlfriends" performance and installation, ULUS Gallery, Belgrade, Serbia
2020 "Together apart", performance, CCB, Belgrade, Serbia
2020 "What would you give for the last Firefly?", video installation, CCB, Belgrade
2019 "Deliberately inefficient", PhD documentary installation and performance, Ostavinska gallery, Belgrade, Serbia
2019 "The Academy of Fireflies", performance, DKSG, New Belgrade, Serbia
2018 "Behind enthusiasm" Kontakt gallery, installation and performance, Kragujevac, Serbia
2018 "Behind enthusiasm" Theater hall SKC, installation and performance, Belgrade, Serbia
2017 “Black but beautiful” Remont gallery, drawings installation, 2017 Belgrade, Serbia
2011 “Passage” Rima gallery, collages and drawings, Kragujevac, Serbia
Group Exhibitions / Performances
2026 BBK Mariendorf Open Studios, Berlin
2026 Somatic Prompts, interactive installation, School of Machines, Berlin
2024 "Moody Drifts: Affective Resistance" dance performance, The National Dance Centre in Bucharest, Romania
2024 "Un(re)learning Rivers" performance and installation, European Pavilion: Liquid Becomings, Quinta Alegre, Lisbon, Portugal
2024 "Ïncoming" performative intervention by Fuzinato Jelena with Adriana Gvozdenovic and Neda Kovinic, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany
2024 "Porous Boundaries" performance and installation, 2024, Open Studios, GlogauAIR, Berlin, Germany
2024 "Soft Power - Dionysian Socialism", reading performance, Unbreak My Radio, Vorspiel/transmediale/ctm, Berlin, Germany
2024 "Animals that are missing" Film, 37. Stuttgarter Filmwinter Festival, Stuttgart, Germany
2023 ”Animals that are missing” film screening, Winter Fest, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Germany
2023 “Sharing works / Inter - Actions / Julie Peckard / Neda Kovinic” performance and video screening, Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg, Germany
2023 “Traveling Bodies” performance, Tarnby Performance Festival, Copenhagen
2023 “Animals that are missing” workshop, installation and listening session, Vital Currencies, Max Planck Institute and Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany
2023 “Non-aligned”, performance and video installation, Römerstraße project space, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany
2023 “Academy of Fireflies” video screening at Shared Spaces, conference at LAF project space Pforzheim
2022 “Silly girlfriends” performance, video and object installation, ULUS Gallery, Belgrade, November, Serbia
2022 Rethinking "The Sadness" by ŠKART, installation with workshops, Institut of The Present, Timișoara
2022 “Silly girlfriends” performance and sound installation, 31. Memorial Nadezda Petrovic, Cacak, Serbia
2022 “Secondary Archives” sound installation, Manifesta 14, Prishtina Kosovo
2021 “Together apart” video installation, the Autumn exhibition, ULUS, Belgrade
2021/2022 "Together apart", video, AFI Whitechapel gallery London/UK ; Hammer Museum UCLA; Crawford Gallery, Corc; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein e.V. Germany;
2020 "Together apart", sound installation, The decade's collection, City Gallery of contemporary Museum of art Smederevo
2020 "Deliberately inefficient", "Atlas particles", ULUS, Kalemegdan
2020 "Klampenborg dancescape", "Where the future begins?", Spring group exhibition, ULUS, Kalemgdan, Beograd
2007 "Community" ULUS gallery, video work and photos, Belgrade
2001 "Second day on the journey through fear” Zacheta Museum, installation, Warsaw, Poland
1998 “Second day on the journey through fear" installation, 39. October Salon MIJ Belgrade, Serbia
1998 "Second day on the journey through fear" installation, International Biennial of Young Artists1998. Vršac, Serbia
1996 “Short cut" Pavilion "Cvijeta Zuzoric" installation,The Examples of Radical Abstract Art, Belgrade, Serbia
REZIDENCES
School of Machines Making & Make-Believe, Performative media, 2026, Berlin
Liquid Becomings: European Pavilion 2024, Spain - Portugal
GlogauAIR Berlin, Germany, 2024.
Arc Bucharest, Romania 2024. Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany, 2022 - 2023.
Institut of the Present, Timișoara, Romania, 2022.
Chemin d'art Alsace, Ottmarsheim, France, 2019.
International Summer Academy, Salzburg Austria, 2017.
AWARDS
The best art work by Gallery Nadežda Petrović at 31. Memorial of Nadezda Petrovic, 2022.
The best art work of The Autumn exhibition 'The State of Exception', ULUS, curated by Dejan Sretenovic and Jelena Stojanovic, Belgrade 2021.
ASSOCIATIONS
Member of the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia - ULUS, 2000. Belgrade